Of the more than a dozen novels Bessa Luís had published by the late 20th century, the best known was The best-known of Bessa Luís’s early novels is A Sibila (1954; “The Sybil”Sibyl”), which won the Eça de Queirós prize and in which the boundary between physical, psychological, and ironic reality is tenuous and the characters gain an almost mythic quality. In Bessa Luís’s fiction, notions of time and space become vague, and planes of reality flow together, dimming the sense of a logical order of events. Her prose has been called “metaphysical” and “ultra-psychological,” and Kafkaesque elements the influence of Marcel Proust and Franz Kafka may be distinguished in the fictional world worlds she createscreated.

Other well-known novels of Bessa Luís include Os Incuráveis incuráveis(1956; “The Incurables”), A Muralhamuralha(1957; “The Stone Wall”), O Sustosusto(1958; “The Fright”), O Manto manto(1961; “The Mantle”), and O Sermão sermão de Fogo fogo(1963; “The Sermon of Fire”). She remained a prolific novelist through the turn of the 21st century, and in 2004 she received the Camões Prize, the most prestigious prize for literature in Portuguese.